Bakunin’s military jurisdictional command has divided its Special Operations Command into units with different operative functions. While Zeros are specialized in forward reconnaissance and information gathering, with a profile essentially based on subtlety, the Special Action Service has a harder and more aggressive tactical profile. Prowlers introduce themselves as specialists in “surgical offensives”, carrying out missions with a high level of independence from their main forces. They have rapidly earned a reputation in performing operations behind enemy lines, thanks to skills that could almost be described as superhuman.

Thanks to their aggressive operating profile, Prowler units can also work as frontline storm troops. The peculiar nature of their missions guarantees enemy contact and high probabilities of ending up dead or captured. That’s why, after the bitter experiences of the Phantom Conflict, all service members replace their Cubes with fast download ports, making external recordings before each mission to avoid information being extracted by the enemy from their heads, be they dead or alive. The Special Action Service is a sort of improved commando unit, with competences and specific skills, created with the sole purpose of making early contact with the enemy and causing the most possible damage. Their training, which is awfully difficult, qualifies them to cover the entire Direct Action operations spectrum. And when that’s not so, when the situation is so strange or desperate that it goes beyond their operating profile, this is when they start to improvise in an emphatically lethal way.

YUDBOTS

Yud is the tenth letter in the Alephbet and it means “Hand”, a more than suitable name for the Remotes used by the Sophotects of the Special Situations Section. The Yudbot is the second generation of the Palbot model designed by Omnia Research for the PanOceanian Military Complex. This model has software improvements optimizing communications security and encryption, and modifications to its traction and articulation systems. The use of advanced neo-materials in its artificial skeleton lightens its weight and improves resistance to attrition after hours of continual use. Nevertheless, these improvements mean a highly increased production cost which seemed excessive for PanOceanian budgets. Therefore, the licence was given to the Special Situations Section, an organization whose smaller size allows higher costs in the interest of superior quality. After successful trials, the Yudbot has become the remote hands of ALEPH’s Sophotects in combat situations.

NETRODS

Netrods allow expansion of ALEPH’s tactical Data Sphere, using aerial or orbital deployment methods, providing cyber-warfare superiority in any combat situation. The assault and support teams of the Section prefer to have an independent net of their own that allows them to act despite any interruptions to local data spheres. The private net established by Netrods ensures that Section units will not suffer any loss of contact with ALEPH for any reason.

WULVERS

The Wulvers are half-breeds, Dogface/human hybrids, a dead end alley from an evolutionary point of view. All are sterile, with no descendants. Therefore, few exist in Ariadna as a whole and those that do mostly come from Caledonia, where the Dogface population is more numerous. If the Dogfaces have a hard time integrating with humans, the Wulvers have it harder, because their wild heritage is even more evident. They possess the makeup of a predator, with large, penetrating eyes and wide jaws with sharp fangs.Their bodies are completely covered by thick hair. Their torso is impressively muscled, they have the arms of a woodcutter and long, strong legs, made for running and pursuit. They are more intelligent than their cousins the Dogfaces, but, like them, they cannot avoid being carried away by the blood fever. Their inherent charge instinct, combined with terrible fury, is a factor that makes it difficult, and sometimes impossible, to hold back a decisive attack by Wulver Grenadiers. Eager to engage in action, an uncontrollable impulse requires them to advance on the enemy. The wild look, the furious cries and the instinctive movement onwards, are the warning signs of a Wulver charge, something any Ariadnian officer can recognize. The main role of the Wulver Grenadiers is shock actions. Once they are loosed to charge, there is no way to stop them and their only alternative is to kill or die. They charge at great speed towards the enemy, boosted onwards by a wild and demoniac fury. Showing total indifference to their own safety or that of others, they are engulfed by an overwhelming passion for the sheer pleasure of battle.

KARAKURI

The Karakuri are autonomous military robot units. Due to their special characteristics they are considered multi-purpose assault troops. They also perform crowd control and anti-mutiny operations in the Nipponese regions of Yu Jing. As shock troops, their mission is to conduct operations in the most dangerous areas of the battlefront, moving unperturbed through crossfires, ignoring damage, and frightening the enemy with their unstoppable advance.

The Karakuri Program was the great challenge for the Nipponese industry, creating a figurehead exemplifying the innovative capacity of the Japanese technological companies inside the Yu Jing industrial complex. The task was to design a combat remote unit with heightened agility and toughness, and an artificial intelligence developed enough to work without a field operator. The Program was called “Karakuri”, the name of Japanese automata dolls of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These mechanized puppets of great beauty and technical precision had the ability to surprise and entertain thanks to the movements of their hidden mechanisms. Like their namesakes, the present Karakuri are dazzling technological prodigies, the next stage in the evolutionary process of combat machines. The modern Karakuri are designed to surprise too. They possess an invisible armoury, hidden in compartments secreted throughout their bodies: from an anti-tank projectile to a pistol, with a plastic explosive package for auto-destructive farewell fireworks. All weapons and systems have been miniaturized, compacted and assembled to achieve maximal volumetric reduction. The result is an ultrasophisticated android creature, built in the form of the ultimate woman/machine hybrid. With a reinforced metallic skeleton, armoured breastplate, wasp waist, long legs, inexpressive facial mask and hidden weaponry, the Karakuri are more fearsome than they are beautiful, the erotic nightmare of any combat cyborg

SPECIAL ARMORED CORPS SPHINX

The Special Armored Corps is a non-conventional penetration unit according to Shasvastii tactical philosophy. Its Sphinx units (a human designation code) can work as an attack vector for the Expeditionary Forces, making the best use of their high speed and stealth abilities. However, they can also be used as an armored reconnaissance force in maximum hostility environments.

To carry out these combat functions, the Sphinxes have been equipped with advanced concealment and invisibility systems that allow them to avoid security and sensor networks. With the purpose of improving their operative performance capacity, they have been fitted with silent mobility equipment, as well as active noise cancellation and electromagnetic masking. Their armored shell has a surface of non-magnetic and non-conductive composite polymers. This surface has properties of light emission that allow it to project camouflage, thermal patterns, and directional polarized holograms. They also have a specialized semi-intelligent computer that deals only with the control of these Thermo-Optical Camouflage Systems, using the information provided by external sensors to optimize the camouflage. In addition, their special mobility mechanisms allow them to move silently, but at maximum speed, over any plane or surface of the battlefield.

The Sphinxes are specialized in covert operations, in which stealth becomes their most powerful weapon. They are big, invisible war machines that move in silent synchrony with the environment until the time comes to display all their armored power in the middle of the enemy lines, where the most damage can be done.